Posted
by
Soulskill
on Saturday October 26, 2013 @08:33AM
from the bet-he-wishes-he-cashed-out-sooner dept.

SonicSpike writes "An FBI official notes that the bureau has located and seized a collection of 144,000 bitcoins, the largest seizure of that cryptocurrency ever, worth close to $28.5 million at current exchange rates. It believes that the stash belonged to Ross Ulbricht, the 29-year-old who allegedly created and managed the Silk Road, the popular anonymous drug-selling site that was taken offline by the Department of Justice after Ulbricht was arrested earlier this month and charged with engaging in a drug trafficking and money laundering conspiracy as well as computer hacking and attempted murder-for-hire. The FBI official wouldn't say how the agency had determined that the Bitcoin 'wallet' — a collection of Bitcoins at a single address in the Bitcoin network — belonged to Ulbricht, but it was sure they were his. 'This is his wallet,' said the FBI official. 'We seized this from DPR,' the official added, referring to the pseudonym 'the Dread Pirate Roberts,' which prosecutors say Ulbricht allegedly used while running the Silk Road."

They may have "seized" them, but unlike with physical property, how can they be sure they are "unspent" and still worth-ful?

What if, when they try to convert them to cash, they are told they've already appeared in the blockchain and have been "spent" elsewhere? Would that not be quite embarrassing? That, from under the noses of the FBI, someone has recovered all that money via an anonymous currency exchange and ran off with the proceeds?

I sincerely hope that they cash in the Bitcoins before something appears on the blockchain from that wallet. Double-spending is blocked, but that doesn't mean the FBI would be the first person to try to spend them. Especially not now they've put it on the news. Anyone could have a copy of that wallet.

Why convert them to cash? They can't freeze the account as they could with a bank, but if they have the account credentials they can simply transfer all the bitcoins to a new holding account to which they have the only credentials.

...but if they have the account credentials they can simply transfer all the bitcoins to a new holding account to which they have the only credentials.

Which is exactly what the article suggests they've done:

"The FBI official pointed me towards this Bitcoin address, which according to the public Bitcoin transaction record known as the “blockchain” received transfers of close to 144,000 in just the last 24 hours. “They finished moving them at 3am this morning,” said the official."

They can either keep them in that account forever, basically useless to anyone...
Convert them to US dollars, just about the single most Bitcoin-legitimizing action I can imagine...
Or they can actually use them as Bitcoins.

The last one gets interesting, because the FBI has accidentally revealed their own current address by this large transfer to themselves. Bam, we have one "known bad" address. Anyone they trade with, then, becomes tainted by association. Would you trust, for example, a VPN service that has accepted payments from the FBI?

Tainted by association makes no sense at all. If you limit the association to direct association, it's trivial to bypass by creating intermediaries. If you make the taint spread, then almost everyone is tainted, so there's nothing to gain. You might as well try to avoid people that are 7 degrees of separation or less from Kevin Bacon.

Yes, it catches some innocents. And yes, eventually the "contagious" taint becomes too dilute to take seriously. But for a few layers of transactions, I for one wouldn't touch any BTC within a few generations of separation of this transactions if you offered to just give it to me for nothing.

By way of analogy - Would you, given the chance, choose to get it on with your favorite supermodel, if you knew that

So, your government arresting someone who allegedly tried to have two people executed isn't helping you? Not only tried, but he thought he succeeded. His jaw probably hit the floor when he found out both his hits were nothing more than fantasies in his own mind.

So, your government arresting someone who allegedly tried to have two people executed isn't helping you?

Accidentally doing some good in the process of defending corporate interests doesn't redeem them as a whole, any more than a mob boss "keeping the peace" in his home neighborhood make him a net benefit to society.

Perhaps you can explain their obsession with Aaron Swartz, then, at worst a two-bit hacker who trespassed on a college campus and made two well-known organizations look a bit silly (if not outright monstrously callous, though that part only came after)?

Well previously they had said they would cash them in (http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2013/10/04/fbi-silk-road-bitcoin-seizure/) in.

I don't see anything in doing that about legitimizing them, as far as I am aware the FBI don't contend them to be illegal anyway.

I doubt the FBI is worried about them accidentally revealing their own address, in fact if anyone wants to decide that makes someone dealing with them tainted, then they could of course leverage that, pay for a VPN account with every provider

The FBI does have reason to care: Silk Road demonstrated the power of bitcoins in concealing payments for illegal goods, complicating their investigation. If bitcoin usage continues to spread, it could complicate future investigations too. Also, other government departments might apply pressure to the FBI to avoid legitimizing the currency.

Seized property is auctioned all the time without acknowledging said property as a currency. All they'd be acknowledging is that they possess something they have no use for that someone is willing to buy.

They seize inventory of drugs quite often in these sorts of heists, and they don't auction that off, because it is illegal property. They will auction off the cars, watches and so on, because it is legal for people own those sorts of things. If they auction off the bitcoins, then they are acknowledging that it is legal to own and sell them.

If the Fed sells them, then it is an endorsement of their legality. If you buy bitcoins from the Fed, then they can't complain about what you do with them unless they could complain about you doing the same thing with US Dollars or Euros in similar circumstances.

I don't know what the position in the US is. I live in Europe, and as far as I can see, they are illegal here because they don't comply with the Electronic Money directive, and I don't think it is possible for them to comply with it.

More than likely, they'll archive all the data for future possible uses, wipe the drives and auction off the machine.

In essence, the money would be locked up unless someone else had access to that wallet.

In so far as I know, the federal government doesn't auction off digital goods like iTunes or Steam purchases like they do with seized goods. Why they auction this stuff off is because land is finite and hosting piles of seized cars, boats, computers, etc. takes up space needlessly.

I wouldn't be surprised if the NSA has cracked the encryption involved in BitCoin transactions. One day soon, the FBI will examine their account balance and find it empty. The BitCoins having been transferred through the NSA to the CIA to fund some assassinations. Or to the next al Qaida.

Convert them to US dollars, just about the single most Bitcoin-legitimizing action I can imagine...

Which might actually be a good move. US dollar is going to undergo hyperinflation when the petrodollar scheme collapses and all those bucks return home, so by moving as much of the economy as possible to alternatives helps minimize the damage. At the far extreme, if the entire US economy uses something else than the dollar the Fed is free to treat it as monopoly money and simply laugh as its debt dissolves. A

I doubt the US government has such foresight and capacity for long-term planning, but an agency leader might.

Whatever drugs you're on, or medication you're skipping, you should lay off. History shows us that the US government is completely capable of long-term planning, as long as we don't make wild and stupid assumptions about their goals.

I think they hold on to them for quite a while as "evidence" while they try to find out the identities of people who sent money to/through SilkRoad. Not that spending them would affect that investigation at all, but just for appearances sake when the court cases happen. My guess: four+ years from now they will auction them off.

They can also simply close the account and destroy the bitcoins, meaning the remaining bitcoins will be worth slightly more. We all of course know exactly what they are going to do. They will play with the IRS and use those bitcoins in various criminal investigations to catch people foolish enough to now use them.

Will the government then be auctioning off the proceeds? Holding them for cashing in later like a bond? Who is advising them on managing the funds? There is both a certain irony and legitimacy in a state holding this new stateless currency.

Will the government then be auctioning off the proceeds? Holding them for cashing in later like a bond? Who is advising them on managing the funds? There is both a certain irony and legitimacy in a state holding this new stateless currency.

It is a government agency, of course there are droves of people to advise, manage, and make every sort of decision on what to do with someone else's money.

It's a Government agency and being such it is heavily influenced by revolving door politics, so I can imagine that what will happen is that an external consulting company will be assigned with the task of managing the funds and will invoice them to the tune of 144,001 Bitcoins.

Assuming they have an expert knowledgeable about bitcoin on their staff - I'm sure the first thing they do is transfer them to a new address for "safe keeping", preventing the original owner from doing so at a later time.

The fact that so much bitcoin was in a single wallet to begin with is pretty poor planning on DPR's part... someone with that much BTC should probably be a bit more careful about where it's located.

You clearly have no idea how bitcoins work whatsoever. You can tell if they're spent or not. "Spending" them changes ownership over to a new wallet. The wallet file is basically a deed to bitcoins floating around in the network and it specifically says in realtime how many you own.

They're in a brand new wallet; all the coins were transferred in on 10/25/2013. So even if someone had a backup of DPR's wallet (which they don't, otherwise they would have moved them themselves already), the coins are gone from it now. And if the coins had already been spent, it would be obvious, too (the block chain.info link above would show a zero balance).

Moral of the story; Crime pays. Lots. But what good is that if you can't benefit from that pay?

Assets seized during a drug bust go to the arresting agency. In this case the FBI gets the asset (bitcoin) which they can do anything they want with. Assuming they have the private key and/or they have brute forced the private key password. They can convert the coins to dollars. Dumping 144k coins into the market will decimate the market price so they will have to do it slowly. They will probably use the money to buy more Bearcats for domestic oppression.

But there are political concerns too. The FBI is unlikely to take that route because it could be seen as somehow endorsing bitcoins as a currency. More likely they'll just keep the wallet as evidence until all the legal proceedings are over, then destroy it according to routine procedure.

If the feds have seized the file he had with them in it, would someone be able to sped a copy of that file? Does bitcoin have a way to let you "back up" your money so that in the case of a government raid you secret copy elsewhere can be put into action and use the bitcoins for your defense fund, etc? Because it is well known the feds will seize all assets right away to prevent the accused from being able to afford good council and fight in court. If you don't have access to your money, you cant hire go

"The FBI official pointed me towards this Bitcoin address, which according to the public Bitcoin transaction record known as the “blockchain” received transfers of close to 144,000 in just the last 24 hours. “They finished moving them at 3am this morning,” said the official."

So no, they have already "spent" them by transferring them to another address. If they've already been spent then Bitcoin shouldn''t allow them to spent again from a "backup", otherwise it'd be

Your bitcoins aren't in your "wallet" file - they're in an account in the bitcoin block chain "bank". The file simply contains your credentials to be able to transfer those coins. You can back up those credentials, in fact it's strongly recommended since if you lose them (say to a hard drive crash) the coins in the account become permanently unspendable. And anybody with a copy of those credentials can indeed spend the money in the account. I would imagine though that a seizure involves gaining access to the credentials and transferring those bitcoins into an exclusively FBI controlled account to avoid just such a scenario.

By the same token, if you securely encrypt your credentials and refuse to give them the key despite any threats they may bring, they can't meaningfully seize those assets. Of course that "sharing" may come involuntarily via surveillance software surreptitiously installed on your computer.

By the same token, if you securely encrypt your credentials and refuse to give them the key despite any threats they may bring, they can't meaningfully seize those assets. Of course that "sharing" may come involuntarily via surveillance software surreptitiously installed on your computer.

If it's a legal case (and not some black-ops) and they have a legitimate order, they can compel you to transfer the money or throw you in jail for contempt (note, I didn't say you have to give them the key, only transfer th

Well, no, they can't directly compel you to do such a thing - they can threaten you, and possibly carry out those threats if you fail to comply, but it has to be a voluntary action. They can also (and several times have) go directly to the financial institution and freeze or seize the assets via that route, bypassing your will entirely. And that is the route that bitcoin removes. Unlike cash they can't physically seize the assets. And unlike a bank there is no third party to compel. If it's important en

This is my real take-away from the article: DPR trusted nobody for important things that need trust and trusted many people for things that should not have had trust (e.g. doing co-lo in San Franscisco). He could have easily hired two(+) attorneys in foreign jurisdictions and had them combine the key parts in the event of his capture and transfer the funds to a legal defense fund. Obviously, he didn't or the FBI would have bupkis.

No, the person they caught was the one who originally advertised the Silk Road. Read the investigation documents. The story he told reporters about him being the second DPR and completely replacing the first are false.

Sounds like feds are going to have uphill battle in court trying to prove all these beyond reasonable dought. After all in court its not what they say, but what they can actually prove.
Lets just hope some innocent people docent come forward and claim those bitcoing to be stolen by feds from them... Would be embarrashing, not to mention blow feds case out of water...

Just because somebody comes forward with that claim doesn't mean that the jury's going to believe them. The defense would have to provide enough supporting evidence to show that there's a good chance that they're telling the truth, and the prosecution would have the chance to cross examine them and tear holes in their story. The important word in this is "reasonable." Just because somebody's willing to give you an alibi in court does

I've been long enough in IT security to no longer believe that simply because something is on someone's computer or because some data originated from someone's computer that it actually has something to do with that someone. Computers are far harder to secure, far easier to break into and such a break in far harder to notice than your average home would be, especially considering the recent discoveries how "your" system is not necessarily "yours" at all.

I've been long enough in IT security to no longer believe that simply because something is on someone's computer or because some data originated from someone's computer that it actually has something to do with that someone. Computers are far harder to secure, far easier to break into and such a break in far harder to notice than your average home would be, especially considering the recent discoveries how "your" system is not necessarily "yours" at all.

But about the same can be said about cash found in a mattress. It' quite possible it was put there in a factory already as a part of mob money transfer scheme (and somebody got their kneecaps removed, because it was lost), or perhaps a fugitive broke in and hid the booty there (and was then caught or killed and never came to get it, lucky you), or perhaps it simply belongs to the Significant Other, who is secretly running an entirely different illegal business, completely unrelated to the first case.

The bitcoins are still in the FBI seizure account. Not only that, entrepreneurs are sending small amounts to the account, with advertising attached, for online casinos, or cursing out the FBI. I find that amusing. If you scroll down past the tiny (0.0001 BTC) transactions, you will see the big transfers in for 324 BTC at a time. On a phone that spells out "FBI", so that is pretty clear who is doing the tr

The price was just in another bubble after rapdily rising recently, and is cooling off again. Nothing about the recent price movements was very unusual to support an explanation like that. (Also, as another person linked, you can see that the confiscated bitcoins are all sitting still in a certain address.)

i think if the wallet is encrypted they couldnt determine how many coins were in there, or the address without decrypting it. but i think whats extra funny, is that if they have the coins, the fbi/etc seems to think that cryptocurrencies are basically used for crime, so by converting them into USD at an exchange, they are being sold to criminals (like, not the exchange, but eventually) to fund more money laundering and organized crime. pure hilarious because to get any use from them, thats what they have to do. give millions of dollars to organized crime

Sure they can.FBI will have a new addition to their "uniform" - alpaca socks.And they can also buy absurd amounts of quality coffee. This is actually it, there is nothing else you can use your bitcoins for.http://yro.slashdot.org/story/13/10/26/1153212/fbi-seized-144000-bitcoins-285-million-from-silk-road-bust#

They can give them to organizations that accept bitcoins as donations [bitcoin.it]. I don't think that they will pick Wikileaks, the Pirate Party, or even free software with focus in privacy, but i.e. Khan Academy or Sugar Labs are good neutral enough candidates that even they can agree that could give a good use to that donation..

They can give them to organizations that accept bitcoins as donations [bitcoin.it]. I don't think that they will pick Wikileaks, the Pirate Party, or even free software with focus in privacy, but i.e. Khan Academy or Sugar Labs are good neutral enough candidates that even they can agree that could give a good use to that donation..

Unless Congress does it, that's called a "gift of public funds" and is, for obvious reasons, illegal.

The coins aren't in the wallet - they're in a completely transparent, publicly viewable account in the bitcoin block chain. Every transaction is visible to everyone. The wallet only contains the credentials that allow you to transfer the coins to another account. If the wallet was encrypted, and they were unable to access the credentials, then they cannot meaningfully seize the account since another copy of the credentials could (and should) exist elsewhere allowing someone else to spend the coins.

The coins aren't in the wallet - they're in a completely transparent, publicly viewable account in the bitcoin block chain. Every transaction is visible to everyone. The wallet only contains the credentials that allow you to transfer the coins to another account. If the wallet was encrypted, and they were unable to access the credentials, then they cannot meaningfully seize the account since another copy of the credentials could (and should) exist elsewhere allowing someone else to spend the coins.

Given that according to TFA, the Feds have already transferred the coins to another account that they hold and that the transfers are a part of the current accepted blockchain, I would say that they have seized them. A side effect is that by revealing the blockchain entry for the transfers, they have marked these coins as government owned and traceable for the rest of their existence.

I wonder if it would be possible to also transfer the coins using a blockchain prior to the Fed transfer, then somehow replace the Fed transfer in the current blockchain and get the majority to accept the substitution, effectively denying the Feds their seizure? I realize that the majority design of Bitcoin is meant to prevent this sort of thing in reality, but it should be theoretically possible, right?

You can't spend someone else's coins without their private key, but you can rewrite history by coming up with a longer blockchain which does not include certain previously-accepted transactions. That would allow DPR, or someone else with his private key, to transfer the funds "before" the FBI moves them to a different account.

At this point it would be really expensive to pull off, since the FBI's transfers are buried 346 blocks behind the head of the blockchain, but you could do it if you controlled 51% or

You wouldn't need 51% "indefinitely", just long enough to catch up and make your chain the longest blockchain. After that the rest of the network has a choice: follow the protocol and use your blockchain, or perform a deliberate 51% attack of their own.

Checkpoints and other "community-based mechanisms" are outside of the Bitcoin protocol. In any case checkpoints are inserted into the official client on fairly rare occasions to cover blocks which are already well-established. There won't be any checkpoint pr

Beating the network indefinitely would cost about 60 times as much, assuming you can get a reliable 5% APY. (If a 120-day attack costs $X, then the yield from a 60*$X investment at 5% is sufficient to maintain the attack indefinitely.) A factor of 60 is a fairly large difference.

That's assuming you only have 51%. The time required increases asymptotically as you approach 50%. At 60% the attack would take only 12 days, reducing your overall cost by an order of magnitude.

I did assume a constant difficulty, or rather a constant cost to maintain the attack. In the end the difficulty is going to be determined mainly by the cost of energy, once all the efficiency gains (GPU vs. FPGA vs. ASIC, etc.) have been worked out. It won't keep increasing indefinitely. As difficulty increases, the profitability of mining decreases, which acts as negative feedback. On the other hand, if difficulty does increase, say by 1% per year, that just means you'd need even more seed money to offset

the standard is not "proof", the standard is, they need to follow "due process", which I'm sure they are doing, though he is free to challenge it.

it's like the old "if people are innocent till proven guilty, how can they hold you in jail till your trial?" answer: you are not innocent till proven guilty, you are entitled to the presumption of innocence in court, but outside the court, much more reasonable standards prevail, like "was a crime committed?" and "is there evidence that points to somebody?" That's

Well, if they were able to seize the account (presumably meaning transfer the coins to a FBI-controlled account) then they at least know that it belonged to Person X, because they had to get the credentials from *someone*. So on that front what are you going to claim? "Honest officer, I was just holding this authorization to spend millions of dollars worth of bitcoins for a friend" ?

Beyond that I can't say much as I haven't looked into the details of the case.

Given the track record of American law enforcement regarding seizures of assets "believed" to have been gained in unlawful transactions, I would say "Good Luck" fighting that. Further damaging his case, there is a link at the Forbes piece describing some (alleged) Mr. White-like tactics against an embezzler and a blackmailer.

No, not even a little. Have you studied the technology? It's all pseudonymous, which is a completely different thing. Anybody who wishes to can completely monitor all activity on any account, the only anonymity resides in how well you hide the connection between yourself and your account number. Publish your account number publicly, like any legitimate business would do to accept payments, and there is no anonymity whatsoever, and every transaction past and present with that account is now known to be a transaction with that business. If you want to be anonymous then the onus is completely on you to make sure a link between your account number and your real identity is never discovered, the technology offers nothing in that regard.

Frankly, take away the gauze of anonymity and what you have is every financial analyst's wet dream of a currency - *every* transaction laid bare for all the world to see, in real time, and with a permanent record.

Publish your account number publicly, like any legitimate business would do to accept payments...

The recommendation is to use a different account for each order, not just for anonymity but so that you can distinguish the payments apart from the amount, which may not be unique, or even an exact match for the order in the event of a mistake. It's fairly rare even for "legitimate" businesses to have just one account number.

Even apart from unique receiving addresses, any business dealing in large quantities of bitcoins will probably want separate "working funds" and offline "cold storage" accounts, and gen

That sounds like a lot of considerations and headache that are only relevant to people seeking to hide their account transactions. If someone were to go down and buy a TV at BitMart I'm pretty sure the sequence would becashier: "you owe X bitcoins, please transfer to Account A"you: "okay, here it is coming from Account B"cashier (a half hour later after the transaction is confirmed): "thank you, come again."

How on earth would involving several additional accounts in the transaction simplify anything? All

If you don't give each order a unique receiving address, you have no idea which incoming funds are meant to pay for which orders. You give the buyer an address to send funds to; they aren't expected to know which address(es) the funds come from. They just enter the receiving address and amount (or scan a QR code) and tap "send". Some of the smaller clients stick to a single address and private key, but most of them, including the official client, use randomly-generated "change" addresses which aren't shown

Well, you could send them back, but I don't think there's currently any technical mechanism to be able to refuse to accept them, Giving your account bitcoins is a transaction between the sender and the network, you aren't actually involved at all except to provide the target account #..

Some effort is required to protect your privacy with Bitcoin. All Bitcoin transactions are stored publicly and permanently on the network, which means anyone can see the balance and transactions of any Bitcoin address. However, the identity of the user behind an address remains unknown until information is revealed during a purchase or in other circumstances. This is one reason why Bitcoin addresses should only be used once. Always remembe

Ignoring the logistics of actually doing that (which would affect many more transactions than just that), you'd have to convince 51% of miners that the loss of confidence in the Bitcoin system that would result from that network meddling would be worth it. A 51% attack on Bitcoin for any reason would destroy a lot of confidence in the system. The price of bitcoins would plummet. Good luck convincing miners, who profit from the price of bitcoins, to ever do that. Also, not everyone who uses or mines Bitcoin

Well, if they overstate the value of the bitcoin like they overstate the value of siezed drugs, they got about $3.24 in bitcoin...Other probabilities include, but are not limited to; Drug trafficking; smoking a joint with the UPS guy. Money Laundering; Buying office supplies via bitcoin. Computer hacking; installing TOR. Murder for hire: Called Orkin for exterminator.C'mon , who can believe a fucking word ANYONE involved in Federal Government says? How about when it's reported by Newsclowns?Uhm , yeah, you